The author is Steve Solomon and he certainly knows a thing or two about growing plants. Steve was the founder of Territorial Seed in Oregon, and the author of several organic gardening books. I have also dealt with him on several email lists and find him to be knowledgeable and helpful.

Bringing your chile plants indoors for the winter
It’s that time of year again, when I look outside at all those wonderful chile pods that have yet to ripen on the plants, and watch the weather report looking for the big freezes. I can’t save all of them, but I am able to keep a small supply of fresh pods coming throughout the winter months by bringing a select few plants indoors.

While chiles are generally grown in the United States as annuals, the plants really are perennials. You can keep them alive for many years if you wish. The biggest advantage for home growers is that you are starting in the spring with a fully mature plant that can start producing again as soon as it is warm enough for flower set.

This version of Kung Pao Chicken is more like the version that you are likely to be served in China than the standard American version. For that reason, you will have to go out and find a local Asian food store to aquire some of the ingredients.

Market growers, Michael and Joy Michaud of Peppers By Post appear to have a serious contender to take the world's hottest pepper title away from the Red Savina!

Over the last few years they have selectively bred seed from the Naga Morich, which is popular with the UK Bangladeshi community. They were primarily selecting for the size and shape of the pods, but as it turns out they ended up with a chile that packs quite a wallop as well.

They grow their chiles in high tunnels in West Dorset, UK. In 2005 they sent samples from the plants in their warmest tunnel to two testing labs in the United States and the results came back with some surprising numbers. The first test came back with a result of 876,000 Scoville Heat Units. To verify that first test a second was performed by another lab, which came back with an even higher 970,000!

During the late summer months, when the tomatoes, chiles, onion and garlic are all starting to ripen, I can just about live on this stuff.

It was actually a bit of a freak chance that I discovered how much better this salsa was when using cherry tomatoes. They were the first to ripen a couple of years ago, and the extra sweetness combined with the thin skin and small seeds made for a really wonderful salsa.